Read more
Faulkner's final novel is a tale of three Mississippi travellers. Ned, Boon and young Lucius travel to Memphis in a stolen car to find love and fortune. Once there, Ned trades in the car for a racehorse, Lucius comes of age, and Boon sets about trying to win the heart of a prostitute named 'Miss Corrie'.
About the author
Born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, William Faulkner was the son of a family proud of their prominent role in the history of the south. He grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, and left high school at fifteen to work in his grandfather's bank. Rejected by the US military in 1915, he joined the Canadian flyers with the RAF, but was still in training when the war ended. Returning home, he studied at the University of Mississippi and visited Europe briefly in 1925. His first poem was published in T
he New Republic in 1919. His first book of verse and early novels followed, but his major work began with the publication of
The Sound and the Fury in 1929.
As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931),
Light in August (1932),
Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and
The Wild Palms (1939) are the key works of his great creative period leading up to Intruder in the Dust (1948). During the 1930s, he worked in Hollywood on film scripts, notably
The Blue Lamp, co-written with Raymond Chandler. William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer Prize for
The Reivers just before his death in July 1962.
